


Man of the Land

by OneTrueStudent



Category: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Stephen R. Donaldson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 16:13:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14216898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneTrueStudent/pseuds/OneTrueStudent
Summary: What if? Immediate end of The Illearth War





	Man of the Land

Lord Mhoram said, “Behold—the Unbeliever departs. The High Lord has fallen.”

Thomas Covenant heard and did not care. Elena had fallen. His daughter was dead. The ring hung from his too-thin fingers like an untightened noose, trying to fall towards the dead earth of Gallows Howe. It rested against the knob of his first knuckle. His fingers were so thin his knuckle supported it like shoulders, and the thin, bony digit held it like a dumb neck. Elena had fallen. Covenant watched the world fade.

#

The world screamed before it was real, and it faded in with a shrill shrieking. His forehead hurt like hell. 

Elena! What have I done? he cried. His tongue was too thick for screaming. The silence swallowed his yells, subsumed them into the shriek of the phone. It yelled over him. It accused him. 

Gently, Covenant lifted the hand-set and replaced it on the receiver. The shrill accusation was silenced in an instant. His forehead hurt like hell. 

Elena, what have I done? he cried.

Thomas staggered to the bathroom. Dried blood made stalactites on his forehead, dripped down to his dark eyes like the caverns under Rivenrock. His beard hung from flaccid skin. Looking into his own eyes and seeing horrors, he drank and made himself swallow. Then, in the sterility of tile and fluorescent lights, Covenant gave himself a VSE.

He had not injured himself more, nor healed his hurts to any less. Every wound that had marked him on his arrival to the Land, gone with hurtloam, was back in perfect symmetry. He was exactly how he had left. But the Land wasn’t. The land was scarred by Foul’s efforts and Troy’s sacrifice, marked by Covenant’s failure. 

Covenant drank from the tap. The water was stale and dead. It tasted nothing like water. He thought of Glimmermere. The water foamed and ran down the drain, too quick to cast shadows.

“Elena, what have I done?” cried Covenant, truly crying now, and letting tears run down his face. They formed a black river of scabbed blood under the overhanging shadows of his eyes. The fluorescents cast dead light.

“I killed her,” he admitted and cried.

“Who did you kill, now?” asked a thick voice behind him.

“My daughter. Trell’s granddaughter,” Covenant told Troy. “I raped his daughter, and she forgave me. He never did. I killed his daughter.”

“You killed her?” repeated the thick voice. “Who’s her?”

“I told you, you blind fool! Elena! I killed her with my bargain!” yelled Covenant, and whirled away from his own cavernous reflection.

Sheriff Lytton regarded him, a thick man with a big belt. He had both hands by his buckle, near the gun, not on it. The sheriff hadn’t removed his hat coming inside.

“You dialed emergency, rambled. Did she do this to you? Elena?” asked Lytton. 

“No. No. I did it. I did it all.”

“I heard. Why don’t you come in to the station, Mr Covenant. I want to talk with you about that.”

Covenant knew, like stepping from a cavern to the sunlight, he was in a different world. He was gone. He was the cavern, and Elena was dead.

“Fine. Just call my lawyer.”

Sheriff Lytton put handcuffs on Thomas Covenant’s thin wrists with care to make sure it wouldn’t help Covenant in court and took him in.

 

https://i.imgur.com/6uuPFox.png

**Author's Note:**

> What if TC was from Florida?


End file.
